


Death Loses the Battle Against Love

by crimsondust



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Enjolras and Grantaire are together in death, M/M, Some people must have had the task of clearing the streets, after everyone has died
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-03
Updated: 2016-07-03
Packaged: 2018-07-19 18:00:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7371943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crimsondust/pseuds/crimsondust
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Monsieur Favreau, a Parisian sweeper comes across Grantaire and Enjolras' dead bodies.  Also made an attempt at Hugolean prose. Also very sorry for that failed attempt. And for dead E/R.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Death Loses the Battle Against Love

There are some men whose occupations may not be well appreciated but who carry on important thankless services for the citizens day after day. One such man was Monsieur Favreau.

Monsieur Jean Favreau, it may be herein stated, was accustomed to sweeping the streets of Paris in the mornings after the remains left behind by stray cats and dogs. Periodically, a stench of urine would arise from the streets which would be washed away with the liquids he carried in his threadbare bag.

Nor did he make great protestations subsequent to cleaning the streets where wine casements sometimes broke away from their carts and spilled their contents. He did not even flinch, being so used to the sight, of the poorest of the poor making the streets their home for the night. He tolerated with some patience, the clearance of any particular street, whence drunken gentlemen had collapsed for indefinite intervals and left glass shards from wine bottles or sometimes a crumpled pamphlet or two. Violent fights did on occasions break and he had sometimes to wash away blood and he was prepared for that. Such is the life of a humble sweeper of the streets.

Monsieur Favreau, it must be explained to the reader, was no stranger to revolutions being a man of much advanced years. He had witnessed the revolutions in 1789 and the one in the July of 1830 and had seen people on trial and blood on the streets. Even so, he had not expected to see another in his lifetime.

Old age had granted this sanguine man the role of a philosopher, though he had never learned a word of reading or writing and a scholar though he hadn’t been to any of the glorious institutions that distinguished men pass through. He discoursed mainly on the conditions in the city and on the wretched existence of the poor in which he counted himself, to anyone who was willing to listen.  

Even for a veteran sweeper, what he found on Rue de la Chanvrerie, Rues du Cygne and Rue de la Petite Truanderie on the day of the 6th of June as he sat in his horse-cart surveying the streets that had seen so many deaths in the span of a few days, left him in shock. For some time he was unable to form coherent words, so deep was his shock and so long did he stand surveying the scene. Part of the barricade still stood while much of the area was strewn with broken chairs, tables with their legs missing, mattresses with goose feathers lining the streets, rifles, pistols and torn cartridges that had the occasion to appear out of nowhere even underneath his boots that were badly in need of repair. 

His eyes had fallen on a bullet riddled jacket on a pole first and then on the body of an elderly man laid atop a table in the wine shop. He then came across corpse after corpse. Some were donned in the uniforms of the National Guard while many were of ordinary citizens. The stench of decay had not yet begun to set and Monsieur Favreau moved about, pausing at each body and looking at each face before he loaded the dead onto the cart which would take them away.

Many were boys, no older than his youngest son. Monsieur Favreau had not yet made up his mind whether he cared or not for revolutions but the sight unsettled his heart. As he passed by each body he removed his hat and said a few words and shed a tear or two as he lamented:

_Blood gushes through the narrow streets,_

_Blood flows across the winding Seine_

_And all is as it was before_

_Yet ne’er will be quite the same_

Presently he came across two youths lying side by side holding hands. One youth’s body was punctured with eight or nine bullets. His face, untouched by battle carried a defiant, yet a sweet, almost poignant air. Monsieur Favreau could not help but pause in wonder at the alluring face, which even in the midst of death looked like a beautiful flower that was only asleep, with soft flecked golden curls adorning his face and reflecting the morning light from the broken window of the wine shop. He had a soft smile on his face as he gazed at his companion. Monsieur Favreau stood for a moment and wept at the loss of youth, at the loss of beauty, at the loss of life. 

He was surprised to see the second youth, not quite matching the other in looks, but with an air of unmistakable happiness about him. This one's hands were clasped in the hands of the first youth and all of Monsieur Favreau’s efforts could not part them. Nisus was gazing at his Euryalus with a look of delight, a look of admiration and unless Monsieur Favreau’s dim, tired eyes deceived him, a look of genuine fondness. Monsieur Favreau did not know it but he was gazing at Enjolras and Grantaire. He murmured:

_Even death cannot in its turn part them_

_What absolute power love holds on men_

He walked on sorrowfully ahead collecting the bodies from the streets. 


End file.
